Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'New Essays on Human Understanding' and 'Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind'

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8 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

6641	Externalists say minds depend on environment for their very existence and identity [Lowe]
	Full Idea: Externalism maintains that our minds 'reach out' into our physical environment, at least in the sense that our states of mind can depend for their very existence and identity upon what things that environment contains.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6)
	A reaction: A nice statement of the externalist view. Does this mean that a brain in a vat would not have a mind? Does a photograph 'reach out' to its subject-matter?

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / e. Questions about mind

6617	The main questions are: is mind distinct from body, and does it have unique properties? [Lowe]
	Full Idea: Philosophy of mind seems to address the questions of whether the mind is distinct from the body, and whether the mind has properties, such as consciousness, which are unique to it.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Intro)
	A reaction: Simple enough, but the modern debate seems to centre on the second question, which is here stated nice and clearly. Of course, wild garlic has a unique smell, but that doesn't quite qualify as a 'unique property'. Are the properties of mind unpredictable?

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 7. Animal Minds

5054	Animal thought is a shadow of reasoning, connecting sequences of images by imagination [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The sequences of the brutes are but a shadow of reasoning, that is to say, they are but connexions of imagination, transitions from one image to another.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref)
	A reaction: This account of animal thought cannot capture the fact that they are motivated by their images, and obviously make decisions based on them. Externally, there is usually an obvious reason why even an insect does something.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / c. Parts of consciousness

6626	'Phenomenal' consciousness is of qualities; 'apperceptive' consciousness includes beliefs and desires [Lowe]
	Full Idea: There is 'phenomenal' consciousness, which is what is distinctive of qualitative states of experience, and 'apperceptive' consciousness, which is awareness of all of one's mental states, including beliefs and desires.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 3)
	A reaction: I am not convinced that this distinction is sharp enough to be useful, though I approve of trying to analyse the components of consciousness. Is there 'intentional' consciousness? Desires, and even beliefs, can have qualities.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind

12944	It is a serious mistake to think that we are aware of all of our perceptions [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Many errors can flow from the belief that the only perceptions in the soul are the ones of which it is aware.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.01)
	A reaction: What a perceptive remark, for its time! I took it that it was only modern neuroscience and psychology which had woken us up to how much non-conscious activity is central to the mind.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 7. Blindsight

6646	The brain may have two systems for vision, with only the older one intact in blindsight [Lowe]
	Full Idea: Some physiologists maintain that the human brain is equipped with two different visual systems, an older one and a more recently evolved one, only the first of which is intact in blindsight subjects.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2000], Ch. 6)
	A reaction: Ramachandran (on TV) suggested that lizards lack the newer system, and therefore may not actually be conscious. The proposal of two systems seems to make nice sense of an odd phenomenon. We clearly have a non-conscious route to visual information.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 5. Generalisation by mind

12951	Abstraction attends to the general, not the particular, and involves universal truths [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Beasts recognise whiteness, but this does not amount to abstraction, which requires attention to the general apart from the particular, and consequently involves knowledge of universal truths.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.11)
	A reaction: I'm not sure where 'truth' creeps into this. I might hallucinate pink elephants, and abstract the general notion of pink from them. Nevertheless, the features picked out in abstraction tend to be the shared features.

15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 10. Conatus/Striving

19364	Volition automatically endeavours to move towards what it sees as good (and away from bad) [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Volition is the effort or endeavour ('conatus') to move towards what one finds good and away from what one finds bad, the endeavour arising immediately out of one's awareness of those things.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 2.21)
	A reaction: Modern neuroscience seems to confirm that there is a chicken-and-egg problem here. Is the moment of perception as good or bad itself an act of volition, or is it neutral?